


Like the Shadows

by demon_dream



Series: still somehow the same [1]
Category: Undertale
Genre: Additional Tags to Be Added, Alternate Universe, Angst, Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dreamtale, Emotional Manipulation, Fluff, Gaslighting, Gen, I will be nice to people and that is a threat, Multiverse Shenanigans, Nightmare is a dick, Past Abuse, Power Imbalance, Toxic Relationship, War Themes, bad sans club, is this brainwashing? possibly, keep calm and yell for Cross, smol Dream, some gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-07 12:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20309224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demon_dream/pseuds/demon_dream
Summary: At the age of 6, two tiny guardians were faced with an angry mob and no good options. Broken, disadvantaged, and in a corner, Nightmare made his choice. This spawned a great and terrible villain that would spend over four hundred years cementing his power over a good portion of the known multiverse, amassing minions, and becoming a dark god.At the age of 6 when his world was ending, Dream was turned into a statue when his brother went mad with his new powers. But that’s alright, it’s not like it lasted long. The absence of battle wreckage is a little weird though. He just wants his brother, his moon, his home.As for... everyone else? There had been rumors about a Yin to Nightmare’s Yang, a hope, a wish, a fantasy gathering dust. But this tiny kid isn’t exactly... uh. Dangerous. Or remotely willing to fight Nightmare. Oh boy.





	1. Cradle and All

**Author's Note:**

> So I wanted to write something a little traumatizing, someone else wanted Dream and Nightmare and wasn’t opposed to angst, I got carried away. There is a rough plot. But I MEAN IT, if you don’t want to read a toxic and unhealthy platonic relationship with a power imbalance and heaps of manipulation with no true hero in sight, you might want to leave. There will still be fluff though. Because I’m a sucker for that.

The sun was sprawled broken and bloody on the ridge beyond the valley, sputtering like a starving fire, and all Dream could think as he watched the serpentine mob of torchbearers was _I’m_ _never_ _reading_ _fairytales_ _again_. He didn’t think people actually used pitchforks like that, not anymore. Not the way they did in Nightmare’s grisly books. They looked sharp.

“I wonder why they didn’t bring hammers.” rasped a too-familiar beloved voice.

“Brother!” Dream wrenched himself from his rooted fear to flutter worriedly over his sibling, who was riddled with visible cracks and had jammed himself against the tree like he either wanted to phase into it or attempt to stand, and it wasn’t working either way. His eyes were the only lively part of him, their nightshade glow startlingly vivid in the encroaching twilight. It was hardly enough to see his shredded tabard, the twisted links of the ceremonial maille, the awful cockeyed way his circlet slumped on his brow (maybe it was a balance thing, maybe it was pride, but he’d never seen his brother’s crown crooked, never), and Dream couldn’t tell what was bruising and what was dirt but it made something in his chest howl like the world was ending. He couldn’t scream though. He wanted to. But there were armed humans cresting the hill and Nightmare, strong, brave, smart Nightmare, needed him to be his sun right now.

Dream collapsed on his knees in front of his broken brother and babbled wishes into the crook of his neck, useless prayers to nobody and lullabies from a mom they couldn’t remember, and felt the heat crawling on his spine. It wasn’t real. They weren’t here, not yet, he could- there was still time. “Brother- brother, I won’t let them-“

Nightmare shushed him, tucked his skull beneath his own chin for a moment. Just one moment more. “Dream. Calm down. Look, hush, stop. They just get mad sometimes, you know they do, they’re mad and they don’t understand so they’re terrified, but it blows over. Like clouds over the moon.”

It was a very pretty lie. Dream grabbed it like a lifeline anyway. “That’s a lot of clouds.”

“Ha. Some guardian of positivity you are. Don’t make me do your job too, d-dork.” The darker twin swallowed hard and hoped the rattle in his bones could be mistaken for the cold wind rustling in the apple tree. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the angry faces and flashing teeth warped by upraised flames. Nightmare really, really did not know if he should turn his brother around or stuff him under the roots. Knowing Dream, though... oh, this was such a bad idea. It was the only idea, though. That, on the edge of the clearing, was death. If he died, Dream died, and that was unacceptable. Compared to breaking every vow he’d ever made and defiling his life’s purpose, the choice was obvious.

He needed the strength to survive, so Dream would be safe, so they’d never hurt again, and if these stupid mortals wanted to pick a fight then they’d messed with the wrong guardians. Show up on his doorstep oozing hatred and see if he doesn’t rip the sword from your hand to watch you choke on it, _just_ _see_ _if_ _he_ _doesn’t_. He could use this. He could make this work. It would work. Nightmare knew enough magical theory to give Dream a headache, perks of being a hermit.

Dream wouldn’t like it.

Luckily, there was a horrible distraction roughly a hundred feet away, and despite feeling like the worst sort of pond scum (ha, says the evil twin!) he nuzzled into Dream’s ear and murmured, “Like we practiced, brother. Eyes up.”

He could physically feel Dream lock up around him like a steel trap, shivering rejection of the idea, but with a little helpless sob let Nightmare pry him off. Dream lifted his eyes up to meet Nightmare’s and they were burning like the morning star. “Steady hands.” He whispered back.

Nightmare’s response was a half growl, gritted out as he leaned weakly in and pulled away to do the adult thing because they didn’t have time to cuddle and cry. Blacklight eyes and fractured face, he smiled, and torchlight caught the gold of his crooked crown as the damp bark swallowed their shadows. “Face the enemy.”

There was no time for Dream to stare at him like that, no time for second thoughts, no more time for _I_ _love_ _yous_ or stories or lullabies, and he had to shove his brother in the shoulder to get him turned around but Dream went with it like a tooth that knew it needed pulling. The golden boy settled on his heels in a practiced stance, the best he had for countering Nightmare’s usual close-range tactics, though they’d had no real teacher to hone these basics. They were really a terrible match-up. Probably because they were meant to be an awesome team. Dream managed a wobbly, glossy-cheeked grin. “Ready stance.”

Even after clawing himself into a hard-won vertical position, brittle bark coming loose beneath half-desperate fingers, Nightmare couldn’t stop himself from lurching forward to wrap his arms around this big dumb hero’s waist and clinking teeth to his too-damp cheek. “Get your bow, I have a plan.”

“You always do.” Maybe he was laughing, maybe he was crying, but either way Dream had a ranged weapon and there was no time left. The humans were screaming hate and vitriol, calling out to Dream, pleading, demanding, defensive in the name of greed, and they could take this precious gold from his cold corpse.

Fuck time.

“Do me a favor, sunshine?”

“Anything!” Instant, easy, eager. Nightmare hated himself with a unique and special hatred.

“Forgive me.” The humans were coming, there were _dogs_, they hadn’t been ready, fire and steel and fishing nets and farmers’ hoes with heavy iron heads. Dream twitched with a question and couldn’t ask it because he was firing panic-addled arrows into the mess like that would help.

Behind him, Nightmare whirled and broke every oath to every god he’d ever heard of with bitter satisfaction as cold juice exploded behind his teeth. Rot, it turns out, is actually very sweet. Too sweet. Horribly so. Hideous, but as everything went wrong and his bones crumpled beneath the force of a thousand apples slamming into him, warping him, changing him, he had to admit-

-as the air filled with the heady petrichor of power ripe for the taking, as a thousand eyes rolled white with terror and the night became his nightmare, he had to admit-

-he’d always been curious. And yeah, it was delicious.

Something in his back flexed and someone else’s bones crunched, and Nightmare laughed with a child’s glee fueled by the black behind a kicked dog’s eyes.

Then?

Then it was over, and the bullies had been blown away like clouds over the moon. There was... something important to do? Crushing these ants, obviously. But the ants were gone. So... maybe their houses? Yeah. Yeah! And their livestock, their pets, their fields, their wells- scrub it all out, that sounded cathartic. He had to vent all of this somehow, right? Dream has always said bottling it up was stupid.

Dream.

There were hands on his tunic, tugging him back. As if that could stop the storm from blowing, blowing, blowing all of these clouds away until they orbited around his terrifying glory in a skittish, beat-down dance for his personal fucking amusement.

There might have been words. Something caught his attention, briefly, unimportant and weak, but in a split second of brilliant association he saw gold, thought _don’t_ _hurt_ _him_ and then there was a thunderous crack and the boiling hurricane in Nightmare’s brain lifted ever so slightly. Where the little golden precious had been was an immaculate statue, worry and terror and love etched in every angle as his bow dangled from nerveless fingers.

The lord of negativity needed a moment to process that, and... couldn’t, really. His brain just didn’t know what to do with that information. He did notice that there was suddenly a lot less negativity in the area, so it was unfortunate that this person was frozen. This person was very important to him, this was someone named Dream, and he wasn’t to forget. But he was a statue, which was inconvenient, and the bubbling black wrath seething in Nightmare’s brain didn’t have the patience for puzzles, so he flexed his magic in a way that was wholly unfamiliar and yet theoretically sound to slap a tracking spell on the thing. It was his. Wouldn’t do to lose his property.

Nightmare glanced around, saw the rampant destruction and crumbling chaos left in his wake, and decided he needed to be more careful about killing those delicious weaklings before he got a chance to enjoy them. At least he had an entire world to practice with.

***

Dream was surrounded by screaming and fire and blood, his brother was imploding with black magic that was crunching him like granola one minute and then there were tentacles and death everywhere. The sun had finally died, so the battlefield was lit by his useless arrows and his brother’s insane, bulging eye aglow with foreign and disturbing shades of venomous green. This was a nightmare. It had to be. He couldn’t- people weren’t supposed to look like that. You weren’t supposed to be able to rip them open as easily as presents and toss them into trees like that. It wasn’t polite. It just wasn’t done.

Everything smelled like metal and his brother was laughing, which was odd, because if his brother was laughing then why was everything still so wrong and awful? He wanted to go home.

Dream turned to see a pile of kindling where their life’s purpose used to be, and shambled forward like a sleepwalker to sift through the wreckage while flaming bodies pinwheeled through the sky to crunch horribly back to earth. Apples. He was supposed to guard the apples. Gold for him, black for N- his brother, for his brother. He needed to find apples to protect. Then he could talk to... then they could talk.

Beneath the folds of the old decorative cloth they’d once tied around the trunk he found exactly one, glittering and perfect. Good. That was good. And now... well, he didn’t have pockets. Or a bag. Or... any safe space to put it. Dream would need his hands. There was a fight going on, after all, so. The apple. He stared at it, long and thoughtful, before coming to the sort of conclusion only toddlers and people deeply in shock can make.

It doesn’t count as eating if you don’t bite it, and skeleton stomachs are half metaphor anyway. He could just store it there for now and figure out how to puke it up later, right? Emergencies called for weird solutions. This would have to do. So Dream shrugged, unhinged his jaw in a way that would have made a normal skeleton cower, and dropped the entire thing into his phantom throat before snapping his teeth shut again. There. Problem contained.

Now for the tentacle monster.

Dream turned around slowly, covered in wood chips and the fog of trauma. Nothing was better. He might even say it looked worse. Nightmare had decorated a tree with body parts and topped it with a burning horse before getting bored, and Dream wasn’t sure he could unsee that. Some of the decorations were still breathing, probably? No. No, just find Nightmare and stop him. He always was a bit overeager about bullies. But he always listened when Dream said it was enough, that they couldn’t anger the villagers too much, that they weren’t worth the trouble, that If Nightmare didn’t want Dream healing dumb kids then Nightmare shouldn’t break their noses for a couple of stupid comments. It was all very reasonable. Nightmare liked reason. He liked reading about depressing logical things like nihilism and stoicism and the nature of pain, logic was a good approach with the stubborn idiot. He would listen. He would stop.

Dream reached his brother, the writhing mass of tentacles and Lovecraftian madness exuding a horrific miasma of despair and bloodlust with a familiar laugh, and tugged on what might have been his tunic. “Brother. Brother, I need- I’m scared.” That always worked.

Nightmare stopped laughing and writhing, but didn’t hug him like he was supposed to. Dream tugged a little harder, then gave up and lunged for a hug. “Nightmare, please-!”

Nightmare didn’t listen, but he did hear.

Magic roared like a lightning strike-

-and Dream stopped.

He didn’t really know what had happened, but that was fine, because whatever spell went off crumbled into bitty pieces and left him blinking into the lifeless night, terrified for his brother and gripping his useless weapon. The fires were gone. His brother was gone, but he never truly left Dream, no matter what, especially not now. If the humans had murdered him then Dream wouldn’t still be here, so. Brother had to be nearby.

Dream took in a deep, deep breath, and screamed at the top of his lungs.


	2. The Tower Upright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you play chess, the game always starts with the queen enthroned on her color. The king, helpless and sheltered, must make do on ground foreign to him.
> 
> It’s time to assemble the players.

“...so, basically, this timeline sets off every red flag I can think of. I know what an apocalypse looks like, boss, and these people are about to take a long walk off a short pier.” Horror tapped a line of data in the report for emphasis, where the gaps inthe societal structure of UNDERSWAP#14916 would soon give way to a power vacuum. A neutral timeline, kingless and sprinkled liberally with dust. It was familiar in the worst way. Nightmare scanned the packet with a critical eye, gesturing for his bodyguard Cross to turn the page now and again. Horror had a sharp eye for timelines that would welcome Nightmare’s dark reign with minimal fuss, likely because of the events of his own timeline. He tended to think with much more deliberate care than the others, considering his head wound, and if this panned out then Nightmare stood to gain quite a bit of resources and manpower with minimal risk. A bit of righteous dueling here, a necessary assassination there... very doable. He smiled darkly and leaned back in his wingback chair, tentacles swaying in idle satisfaction.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You’re in charge of the operation, Horror. Draw up a plan of attack. If you need any assistance, whoever you require can consider it a direct order from me to drop everything and make themselves useful to you. I expect something thorough and feasible on my desk by the end of the week.” Nightmare, lord of negativity and dark king of an ever-growing empire, looked his general over with a wicked smirk. “I look forward to the result.”

Horror chuckled, rough and raspy as he gave a tired mockery of a salute. “Don’t get too excited, boss, you’ll give the twerp performance anxiety.”

At the king’s right hand, Cross bristled, all monochrome and belts and fluffy cloak ruff. In the right circumstances he was terrifying to behold, poetry in motion with a conjured blade, but he was also the youngest of the five generals and a little too easy to tease. He clenched his fist hard enough for his leather gauntlet to creak, but didn’t otherwise say a word.

Nightmare just drank in his bodyguard’s irritation like fine wine and kept grinning.

Horror turned on his heel without being dismissed, steps muffled by the plush silk rug in Nightmare’s study, the gaping hole in his hollow skull given horrible clarity by the gilt candelabras. The king planned on a few more hours of sifting through data points and missives from his various vassal states before following Horror downstairs to the kitchens, maybe spicing things up by asking Cross to pick something entertaining from the heavily burdened bookcases lining his walls. The fact that Nightmare’s entire body dripped eternally with corrupted magic was a bit frustrating sometimes. He could cope with every stitch of clothing he owned becoming an ugly variant of grey-green, but books were too valuable to be damaged so frivolously. Even with access to the multiverse at his fingertips, he couldn’t quite break the habit of treating leatherbound tomes with far more care than he treated anything living. Thankfully, there was Cross.

Nightmare slid his chair back and stood as Horror reached the door, turning to his bodyguard with a half-formed order on his tongue.

Instead he stumbled into the edge of his desk with a choked-off yell as what felt like his very soul tried to rip itself through his sternum, pounding with volcanic waves of pain. There was shouting around him, clattering, someone yelling for backup or healers or something, but Nightmare could hardly hear past the hissing-hot rush of freshly unbound magic. This was something old, probably from his early years, backlash from an ancient spell giving out under pressure. But what? From where? What spell was this, old enough that he couldn’t remember even casting it? Shoddy workmanship. Hell, it was _weak_, or maybe he’d acclimated to the drain? But that would mean-

Then the second wave hit, and Nightmare’s howl rattled the window in its frame. Pain, terror, desperation. He’d had no warning, no time to adjust, and while agony was his art form Nightmare usually preferred a moment to fucking think first. Nobody in the room with him owned these emotions, but somebody somewhere did, and Nightmare was going to kill them for this poorly executed empathic attack then obliterate their broken corpse.

He ripped a hole in the air and vanished before his minions knew what was happening, cussing viciously as he tumbled through.

***

Nightmare burst through the portal, half-blind with emotions and chest still ringing with the force of his shout. What was this, where was the bastard who- it was dark here, nighttime, no stars and no moon. The black grass was brittle beneath his feet. The wind was cold, notably cold, but he wasn’t sure why it was noteworthy. His head was spinning with foreign pain and the strange instability of old magic he’d forgotten suddenly cut from underneath him, confusing, like a sudden lost limb, but more importantly why did it feel like-

Sunlight.

Nightmare turned in that black, ruined world, and felt like a mortal wretch from the Underground experiencing real, too-soft sunlight on his bones for the first time in aeons. Real warmth. Real love. Real, golden... his? For him?

Before he could start the wild ride through the five stages of grief, though, the temporary insanity broke and he was left with a wailing child throwing itself bodily at his leg. He almost kicked it off, but physical contact resulted in a wave of sparkly emotions that nearly knocked him over. Dangerous. Was this an attack? It didn’t feel like an attack. It felt more like-

“BROTHER! I was so scared, oh gods, I didn’t know where you were, are you okay? Did they hurt you? I tried, I really did, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I can-“ Green magic wafted from the child like the rising steam from a freshly baked pie, melding with his magic with familiar ease like he’d been healed countless times by-

-_absolutely_ _not_, _this_ _can’t_ _be_ _real_.

But Nightmare was made of magic and tragedy, and like always knows like. He crumpled to the brittle grass nervelessly, only realizing his hands were shaking after he’d pressed them gingerly to the little boy’s gold-streaked cheeks. Green magic steamed between his fingers as the kid clenched his eyes tightly, choking and shaking while misery billowed from him in waves. It took a moment for Nightmare to remember his own voice. It seemed... stuck, briefly. How strange. “Dream. Calm down. I’m... I’m alright.”

“You’re ALWAYS alright!” The child shrieked, green magic struggling towards him. “You’re always alright, you always have a plan, but this time was _too_ _scary_, okay? This plan was awful. Don’t do that to me, don’t ever, don’t-“ Dream was incoherent, speaking without thinking, riding the wild terror in his soul and unable to manage the negativity. The term, Nightmare knew, was ‘hysteria’, defined as ‘ungovernable emotional excess’. His brother was alive, and currently hysterical. Which meant Nightmare had to do something.

Nightmare leaned forward in a daze and pressed his teeth just above Dream’s gleaming circlet. The child beat his fists against Nightmare’s goopy sternum once, twice. Nightmare had to gently grab his wrists to be sure the kid didn’t disappear inside his torso as the energy left his eyes, the small skeleton falling limp and drained in Nightmare’s hold. Dream didn’t handle negative emotion well. Once upon a time, Nightmare would have hesitated before manually tampering with his magic. At the moment it was practical. The king needed a moment to think, the child was noisy, and draining off negativity from someone who didn’t even want to be so scared and angry was child’s play.

So now Nightmare was crouched with an armful of unconscious babybones in the middle of a ruined hellscape. Wonderful. Probably their home world, which Nightmare had never wanted to see again. This was his brother, who apparently wasn’t dead or destroyed in Nightmare’s initial rampage, and there was no good explanation immediately in sight. Over to the right was a pile of petrified wood, and Nightmare definitely didn’t want to look at that for very long. Or, well, he wanted to spit on it, but he didn’t want to be anywhere near it. So.

He scanned the hillside intently, venomous eyelight casting a sickly glow over the dead grass and dry earth. Nothing looked noticeably disturbed. The only footsteps were the crumpled bits of weed where Dream had run to him. The old glade had been reduced to splinters and ash long ago, but apparently there hadn’t been so much as a puff of wind since he’d killed everything with breath that fateful day. Hollow and soundless, no magic on the air, as barren as an Outertale moon. If he squinted, he could still see a few rib cages dangling from the brittle trees, though the scorched scars on the land were lost in the corrupted black hue this world had become infected with. He recognized the chill here, now, and why his subconscious had thought it worth noting.

This was the chill of a world that hadn’t seen sunrise in centuries. He was almost proud of that.

Still, this was a waste of time. No one had been casting spells, Dream had apparently either spawned from nothingness or somehow stood in that exact spot for all this time, and all that remained were worthless half-forgotten memories. Perhaps he shouldn’t write it off entirely, as the mystery might bear investigating further... Nightmare dug a toe into the gritty soil and carved a rune there, in case he wanted to find this lifeless universe again. That done, he considered the petrified wreckage of their apple tree for a brief moment, weighing the pros and cons of setting it on fire for old times’ sake... but no, he wasn’t sure what blasting it with magic would do. He certainly didn’t want it to... grow again, or something. Best to leave it alone. He had enough trouble drooling onto his shirt sleeve right now, and the castle was probably up in arms at their master’s dramatic exit.

Honestly, he just wanted a book and a glass of some hideously expensive stolen wine. Nightmare was currently too tired to tease Cross, even, and that was the real tragedy here.

Lord Nightmare, supreme ruler of a wide swath of the multiverse and hailed by many as a dark god, blipped out of the ruins of Dreamtale with an armful of vulnerable child, magical tag gleaming quietly on the abandoned hillside.

***

Somewhere in the multiverse, Ink stepped on a butterfly and made a comically disgusted face at the mess on his shoe. “Ugh, I didn’t mean to do that.”

Beside him, Blue sighed. “You did, though. Please actually take care of it instead of painting over the grossness like usual.”

The paintbrush was already in his hand, but Ink had the gall to look Blue directly in the eyes with a wink as he worked. “Pffft-ha-ha! When have I ever done that?”


End file.
